


we wanna be the very best

by nookiepoweredamazon



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Multi, Pokemon GO - Freeform, Polyamory, relationship dynamic: triad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 06:45:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7924642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nookiepoweredamazon/pseuds/nookiepoweredamazon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ruby, Emma, and Regina may have different reasons for playing, but they're all in it to win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we wanna be the very best

**Author's Note:**

> Beta’d by the wonderful [midnightbokeh](http://midnightbokeh.tumblr.com/)!

It’s Ruby who gets them playing.   
  
Regina makes her take a phone into the woods, even though Ruby argues she can’t text _without thumbs_ , but she tucks it safely into her red cloak and hides it with her clothes under the towering white pine where she likes to shift.   
  
It’s under that tree where she basks after full moon runs, sprawled out naked on the earth with leaves tangled in her hair and dirt gritty at her back. Ruby loses herself in the ache of well-used muscles and the fading strength of wolf senses, the smells and sounds of the forest wrapped around her like a blanket, and hours will drift by unnoticed until Regina sends Emma traipsing into the woods to find her.  
  
So, now she’s got a cellphone that buzzes with polite but firm requests from her girlfriends to tell them she hasn’t stumbled into a magical vortex or picked a fight with real wolves and that she’s just napping under her favorite tree.   
  
Ruby downloads Pokemon Go at Henry’s suggestion, because neither of his moms will play with him and Ruby has carved out a niche as the fun girlfriend. She doesn’t get the point at first, but she turns it on during her usual walk into the forest (she gets itchy for several days before and after the full moon, has to walk the woods again and again on her human legs) and it feels just like hunting, only without having to floss really thoroughly before Emma or Regina will kiss her.   
  
She hatches eggs at record breaking speeds and catches grass pokemon Henry’s never even seen, and before Ruby knows it she’s going off into the woods in the evenings with Henry on her shoulders. (Which is only possible for her these days because damn, the kid is getting big.)  
  
They have so much fun and it becomes such a _thing_ that Emma wants in. She downloads the app and whispers promises to Ruby in exchange for hoisting her and Henry up into trees for better service. (Emma is the honorable sort, so when they get home she pays up and Ruby’s toes curl and she _howls_.)  
  
Of course then there’s sex and bargaining involved and Regina wants in. She downloads the app and sits in a pile of blankets under the old white pine with Emma while Ruby runs wild the first night of the shift, her howls echoing around them. By the time Ruby is small, human and naked, she’s wrapped up in a blanket between the two of them, listening to Regina bribe Emma with that tongue thing she’s so good at to run in circles with both their phones until her 10k egg hatches.  
  
They race together to level 5 and spend a full dinner discussing which teams to chose. Ruby goes Valor because red is obviously the best color. Emma reads the descriptions thoughtfully and goes Instinct, because the savior’s superpower has always been her gut and intuition; also her yellow bug is basically designed to be the Instinctmobile. Regina choses Mystic partly because the blue team values the slow, calculated play and partly so she can crush both her girlfriends when the time comes. Henry decides to go without a team, because catching pokemon is what it’s all about and he doesn’t want to tip the scales.   
  
By the time they’re level 10 Storybrooke is a warzone. There’s a gym at Granny’s that Ruby keeps red day and night despite the customers that idly challenge it over meals, and one at the old well near the woods that she maintains with relative ease. Emma keeps the Sheriff’s station yellow with the help of David, who readily agrees that the Charmings are an Instinct family, and mostly manages to hold the gym at the docks. Regina keeps the clock tower and city hall blue with an iron fist, managing an unknown number of alternate accounts on burner phones despite everyone insisting that she’s cheating.   
  
“There is no such thing in war,” Regina tells them with a rip-you-apart smile as they sit in a row on Henry’s beachside castle and pray for Dratinis.   
  
Ruby thinks that Regina is enjoying the battle element of this G-rated game a little too much. Of course, Ruby’s been enjoying her girlfriends’ war over the old library a bit more than is family friendly. They keep trying to bang one another into a sated, sleepy coma so they can sneak out and claim the gym for themselves. Joke’s on them, though, because werewolves hardly sleep.   
  
Ruby pops into the game menu and confirms that her Arcanine is still holding the library. Granny’s Primeape is seated impressively at the diner with a squad of allied pokemon, keeping it staunchly red, and Ruby wonders if Granny’s taken her suggestion to give discounts to Valor players.   
  
Emma lets out a delighted squeak as her phone buzzes, then groans as it turns out to be a Weedle. She throws a pokeball at it idly, bare feet tucked under Regina’s thigh and her weight leaned back on Ruby. She turns to plant a lazy kiss on Ruby’s jaw and Regina strokes Emma’s calf. Henry stands up to his waist out in the water, holding his phone up and wandering aimlessly.   
  
It’s so soft, so domestic and so _family_. Ruby’s heart thumps, heavy and warm in her chest, and for several heartbeats she feels so at peace it almost scares her.   
  
Then Henry shouts, “DRAGONITE!” from somewhere out in the water and her girlfriends are on their feet faster than Ruby can say ultra ball -- Regina kicking off her heels and demanding Emma carry her out into the water and Emma torn between ripping off her jeans in front of her son or having to walk around all day in soggy clothes -- and it’s chaos.  
  
Emma shouts, “Close your eyes, kid!” and kicks the better part of her outfit off. Regina clamors into her pantless girlfriend’s arms, nudging her like a horse out into the water.  
  
Ruby laughs so hard she nearly misses the Dragonite, and is still laughing on the ride home.   
   


End file.
